Excerpts from the Psychiatric
("Alienist") Testimony in the Leopold & Loeb Hearing

(August 18-August 19, 1924)

[To further explore the psychiatric
testimony in the Leopold and Loeb hearing, the best easily
available
source isFor the Thrill of It:
Leopold,
Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz
(HarperCollins, 2008).]

Defense psychiatrists
interviewing Nathan Leopold.

Left to right: James Hall, William
Hickson, Sanger Brown (standing), Nathan Leopold, and attorney
Benjamain Bachrach

Debate Over
the Admissibility of the Defense's Psychiatric
Testimony & Ruling
by Judge Caverly

William White,
psychiatrist and
defense expert:

Walter Bachrach: Will you please
state your name?

White:
Dr. William A.
White.

Bachrach: And your place
of residence?

White: Washington,
D.C.

Bachrach: What is your
profession?

White: Physician.

Bachrach: What is your
age, Doctor?

White: Fifty-four.

Bachrach: Will you please
state your professional connections, both present
and past.

Robert
Crowe, prosecutor: Just a
moment. I
object to that, if your Honor please.

Judge
Caverly: Why?

Crowe:
It is incompetent,
irrelevant, and immaterial.

Bachrach: Why?

Crowe:
The only purpose
of it would be to lay a foundation for him to
testify as an expert on the question of the sanity
or insanity of the
defendants. On a plea of guilty your Honor has no
right to go into that
question. As soon as it appears in the trial, it is
your Honor's duty
to call a
jury....

I want
to be
heard on that, your Honor, because if there is any
testimony introduced in this trial as to the mental
condition of these
boys,
any act or any order that your Honor enters in the
case is a nullity.
In other
words, if your Honor, at the conclusion of this
trial, after having
gone into
the sanity proposition, should sentence these boys
to hang, your
judgment would
not be worth the paper that it was written on. The
Supreme court would
set it
aside....What is the
purpose of entering a plea of guilty and then
maintaining that you have
a
defense and you have a right to hear it, when the
law says that that
defense
has got to be decided by twelve men. What is the
defense trying to do
here?Caverly:Have you got any
authorities sustaining your
position?

Crowe: I have got the
Geary case, your Honor.

Caverly:
The Geary case
isn't in point. I know the Geary case. . . . But
that is not on all fours with this case. That was a
trial for insanity,
in
which counsel waived the constitutional rights of
the defendant to a
trial by
jury, and the Supreme Court said, "you must go back
and try the
insanity case
with a jury." There was no question about that.

Crowe: [After
quoting language from
the Geary opinion of the Illinois Supreme Court] Can
language be more explicit, more
mandatory and more direct than the language that I
have just read?
But here is a cold-blooded murder, without a
defense in fact, and they
attempt, on a plea of guilty, to introduce an
insanity defense before
your
Honor, and the statute says that is a matter that
must be tried by a
jury.Caverly: Has
anybody said
that they are going to introduce an insanity
defense?Crowe: Well,
what is the purpose of putting an expert on the
stand?Caverly:
They have a
right to, in my opinion.

Crowe: Aren't
they
going into his mental condition?

Caverly:
Well, suppose
they do?

The defense
hasn't said they are
going to put on alienists to show that these men are
insane, and I
don't think
that they are going to attempt to show that they are
insane.Crowe: Well
then what
is the evidence for, what are they going to show?Caverly:
You will
have to
listen to it.

... Will you cite
one authority?Crowe: I have
cited,
Your Honor, and I believe they are in point.

Caverly:
The Geary case?

Crowe:
The Geary case
and the statute itself, your Honor.

Caverly:
If you are
relying on the Geary case you might as well end the
argument. The Court
will
overrule you. . . .

Crowe:
Your Honor
misses the real point. You have not the power to
determine whether the
evidence
that has been introduced constitutes insanity or
not. Just as soon as
evidence
of a mental condition is brought in the case, that
is a question, as
the Courts
have stated, peculiarly for a jury.

Caverly:
They never said
it.

Crowe: We just
read it
to you.

Caverly: [After
thumbing
through a copy of the Illinois criminal code, the
judge begins
reading] It shall be the
duty of the Court to examine witnesses as to the
aggravation or
mitigation of
the offense.'' Now, then, under that wording of the
statute. . . the Court permitted eighty witnesses to
testify to every
detail to
show an aggravated murder; and after the State is through
the defense come
in
and. . . they wish to put on certain evidence to
show a mitigation of
the
crime. Now then, supposing I were to say no, and
then should impose the
extreme
penalty. Would not the Supreme Court say that if the
Court had listened
to
mitigating circumstances then he would not have
imposed the death
penalty? . .
. Would not the Supreme Court say that I should have
listened to what
the
defendants had to say rather than have made an
arbitrary ruling and
sentenced
them to whatever it might be?...

Clarence Darrow:The State's
Attorney ought to tell us what
we could offer in mitigation. What kind of evidence
would be in
mitigation? . .
.

Crowe: I don't
think
you have any evidence here.

Darrow:
Well, is there
any such evidence in any case in the world?

Crowe: Yes.

Darrow:
What?

Crowe:
Evidence that grows out of the transaction

itself. In other
words, as I explained yesterday, after a murder has
been proved, it is
competent, in order to mitigate the punishment, to
show, for instance,
that the
man who was killed had seduced the daughter or the
wife, that is
mitigating
evidence.

Darrow:
Why would that be competent?

Crowe:
Because it is in
mitigation.

Darrow:
Why?

Crowe:
Because the law
would not hold a man who had a reason in

morals. . .

Darrow:
Oh, that is
nonsense.

Crowe:
. . . for
killing for the same strict accountability that
the law would hold a man who had absolutely no
justification in morals.
. . .Bachrach:He [Crowe] says he was
trying to
show that it was a cold-blooded murder. Upon what
does a cold-blooded
murder
depend if it does not depend upon the mental
condition of the man who
is
committing the murder? How are you going to tell
whether it was a
cold-blooded
murder if you don't know what the mental condition
of the person was
who
committed it?. . . .

Caverly: ....Under that section of the
statutewhich gives the
court the right, and says it is
his duty to hear evidence in mitigation, as well as
evidence in
aggravation,
the Court is of the opin­ion that it is his duty
to hear any
evidence that the
defense may present, and it is not for the court, to
determine in
advance what
it may be. The Court will hear it and give it such
weight as he thinks
it is
entitled to. . . The objection to the witness is
overruled, and the
witness may
proceed.

DEFENSE WITNESSES

Testimony of Dr.
William White

Walter
Bachrach:From
the result,
Doctor, of your examination and observation of the
defendant, Richard
Loeb, are
you able to form and have you formed an opinion as
to his mental
condition at
the present time and on the 21st of May 1924?

William
White: ....Emily
Struthers
[Loeb's governess] pushed him
tremendously in his school work, was apparently
very ambitious with regard to him and stimulated and
pushed him ahead,
further
than he would have gone without that sort of
stimulus....[To meet her
demands, he began a pattern of lying.] For
example, in
college he lied about his marks. He lied about all
sorts of things. He
lied to
Babe Leopold, his comrade, about his attendance in
college. While his
marks
were on the whole pretty good he made them a good
deal better. . . . He
was
continually building up all sorts of artificial
situations until he
himself
says that he found it difficult to distinguish
between what was true
and what
was not true....

He considered
himself the master criminal mind of the controlling
a large band of
criminals,
whom he directed; even at times he thought of
himself as being so sick
as to be
confined to bed, but brilliant and capable of mind.
. . [that] the
underworld
came to him and sought his advice and asked for his
direction, and so
he
directed this whole group of criminal conspirators
from his sick bed.

In a
well-rounded, well-integrated, well-knit
personality, emotion and
intelligence
go hand-in-hand. . . . Dickie is in a stage which if
it goes on further
is
capable of developing that kind of very malignant
splitting.

Walter
Bachrach:Doctor, will you now address yourself to
Nathan Leopold,
Junior, and
state what you have obtained as a result of your
examination of him?

William
White:Nathan's
pathology,
the psychiatrist replied, had begun in early
childhood. His classmates
at the
Douglas School had teased him relentlessly; his
estrangement from his
peers had
begun when he was seven or eight years old and had
continued through
his time
at the Harvard School and into the present. Nathan
had always been a
lonely,
unhappy child, ever the outsider; and to protect
himself from further
pain and
hurt, he had retreated into an inner world where
emotion counted for
nothing
and intellect was all.

Nathan, like Richard,
was trapped inside a world of fantasy. Nathan
imagined himself as a
slave,
subservient yet physically powerful, who had saved
the life of his king
and had
thereby earned the king's gratitude. It was an
elaborate fantasy,
played out in
innumerable ways, yet it always allowed Nathan to
imagine himself as
superior.

Babe fancies
himself as being a slave, in which
case
he has saved the king's life, and the king is very
grateful, and the
king wants
to recompense him by giving him his liberty, which
he refuses. However,
he is a
very unusual slave. He is not an ordinary every-day
slave. He belongs
to the
social grade of slaves, to be sure, but he is very
powerful, physically
powerful. The various kings, when they are in
dispute with one another,
if they
want to settle their differences, each pick out one
of their slaves to
fight in
single-handed combat. He is always the one that is
picked out. He
always wins.
Sometimes, he says, he has found himself fighting
many, many men in his
phantasies, to save the king. At times it was
getting where he was
fight­ing a
thousand men, single-handed; and then the thing
would get so utterly
ridiculous
that he would shake himself out of the phantasy and
perhaps begin over
again.

Walter
Bachrach:Now, what findings did you arrive at . . .
with
reference to each of the defendants in combination
with the other?

William
White:Nathan
and Richard
complemented each other. Richard needed Nathan's
applause and
admiration in order to confirm his sense of his own
self.

But Nathan also needed
Richard to play a role; Richard took the role of a
king who was
simultaneously
superior and inferior. Richard had suggested the
murder and had taken
the
initiative in its planning-in that sense, he had
been
the
king. But at crucial moments, when Richard had
appeared to falter,
Nathan had
assumed command. For example, on the day following
the murder,
Thursday, 22
May, Richard had wanted to abandon the ransom
attempt as soon as they
had
learned of the discovery of the body-Dickie would
have let it gone
by but Babe. . . insisted upon send­ing the
last
telephone message and taking such chances to bring
the whole thing to a
successful combination.

It was a peculiarly
bizarre confluence of two personalities, each of
which satisfied the
needs of
the other. Nathan would never on his own initiative
have murdered Bobby
Franks.... I
cannot see how
Babe would have entered into it at all alone because
he had no
criminalistic
tendencies in any sense as Dickie did, and I don't
believe Dickie would
have
ever functioned to this extent all by himself, so
these two boys with
their
peculiarly interdigitated personalities come into
this emotional
compact with
the Franks homicide as a result.

Walter
Bachrach:As a
result of your examination and observation of the
defendant Richard Loeb have you formed an opinion as
to his mental
condition on
the 21st of May, 1924?

William
White: Yes, sir.

Walter
Bachrach:What is that
opinion?

William
White: He was
the host
of anti-social tendencies along the lines that I
have described; he was
the
host of an infantile make-up which was a long way
from the possibility
of
functioning harmoniously with his developed
intelligence. . . . The
main
outstanding feature was his in­fantilism. I mean
by that these
infantile emotional
characteristics. That is the outstanding feature of
his mental
condition. He is
still a little child emotionally, still talking to
his teddy bear. . .
.

Walter
Bachrach:Now, have you an
opinion as to the mental condition of Nathan

Leopold, Jr., on the
21st of May, 1924?

William
White:Yes.

Walter
Bachrach:What is your
opinion?

William
White: Well, he
also is the
host of a relative1y infantile emotional aspect of
his personality but
. . . he
has reacted by a defense mechanism, which has
produced the final
picture of a
marked disordered personality make-up in the
direction of developing
feelings
of superiority, which places him very largely out of
contact with any
adequate
appreciation of his relations to others.

Walter
Bachrach:You may
cross-examine.

Robert Crowe:Now, how many
persons--From how
many persons did you get any information in
reference to Nathan
Leopold, Jr.
that you base your opinion on? . . .William
White: I did
not get any information from anybody except Nathan
Leopold,
Jr. . . . I beg pardon. I want to supplement that. I
had read--There is
one
other thing I did have. I had read the so-called

Bowman and Hulbert
report.

Robert Crowe:Do you think
that Nathan Leopold would attempt to mislead you?

William
White: I don't
think he
did. . . .

Robert Crowe:He has not
lied
to you at all?

William
White: I
don't remember any particular
instance at this moment where I believe
Nathan lied to me. I think he was frank, as frank as
he could be.

Robert Crowe:You are
satisfied that he has been absolutely truthful, that
is, Nathan has,
with you
all the way through? . . . Don't you think it is
strange that he lies
to Loeb
and he lies to everybody else except you? . . . The
fact that Nathan
Leopold
has lied to every other person that he has talked to
except you,
doesn't make
any impression on your mind at all? Does it?....

Robert Crowe:[What did Leopold and Loeb
tell you about
their previous crimes?]William
White: They set
fire to
several buildings. Three instances I think they gave
me of having set
fires. .
. .

Robert Crowe:Now tell us what
Loeb told you about these fires? . . .

William
White: Well,
this shack
was set on fire, this particular one. . .

Robert Crowe:When and where
was it?William
White: I don’t
know where it
was.

Robert Crowe:Didn't you ask
them?

William
White: It was
out in
the middle of a lot somewhere.

Robert Crowe:Can you give
us
any information that will enable me to check up and
show whether this
actually
happened or whether they had just imposed on you?

William
White: No, I
can't give
anything to satisfy you. . . .

Robert Crowe:If you were able
to tell me the date on which it happened and the
location don't you
think I
would be able to obtain proof as to whether or not
they were lying to
you or
telling you the truth?

William
White: You
probably
would be able to tell whether such a thing happened
in the city.

Robert Crowe:And your
conclusion depends entirely upon the fact that you
be­lieve what
these boys
told you? . . . If they have fooled you and
consistently lied to you
then your
conclusion isn't worth anything, is it?

William
Healy,
psychiatrist and defense expert

Clarence
Darrow: [What did you learn about the
relationship between
Leopold and Loeb?]William Healy: As far as I can
find out from the account given by the boys
themselves and from their
relatives, their association began at fifteen years
of
age. They just barely knew each other earlier, but
that is the time
they first
came together. It is very clear from the study of
the boys separately
that each
came with peculiarities in their mental life. . . .
Each arrived at
these
peculiarities by different routes; each supplemented
the other's
already
constituted abnormal needs in a most unique way. And
in regard to the
association I think that the crime in its commission
and in its
background has
features that are quite be­yond anything in my
experience or
knowledge of the
literature. There seems to have been so little
normal motivation, the
matter
was so long planned, so unfeelingly carried out,
that it represents
nothing
that I have ever seen or heard of before. . . . In
the matter of the
association, I have the boys' story, told
separately, about an
incredibly
absurd child­ish compact that bound them. .. .
For Loeb, he says,
the
association gave him the opportunity of getting
someone to carry out
his
criminalistic imaginings and conscious ideas. In the
case of Leopold,
the
direct cause of his entering into criminalistic acts
was this
particularly
childish compact.

Robert
Crowe:You are talking
about a compact that you characterize as childish.
Kindly tell us what that compact was.

William
Healy: I am
perfectly
willing to tell it in chambers but it is not a
matter that I think
should be
told here.

Robert
Crowe: I
insist that we
know what that compact is," Crowe replied, "so that
we can form some
opinion about it. . . . Tell it in court. The trial
must be public,
your Honor.
I am not insisting that he talk loud enough for
everybody to hear, but
it ought
to be told in the same way that we put the other
evidence in.

[Judge Caverly, after a
discussion
with the attorneys at the bench, told William Healy
to whisper his
answers so that only the judge, the attorneys, and
the stenographers
could hear his words.]William Healy: This compact, as was
told to me separately by each of the boys, consisted
in an
agreement
between them that Leopold, who has very definite
homosexual tendencies
was
to have the privilege of--Do you want me to be very
specific?

Robert
Crowe: Absolutely,
because this is
important.

William
Healy: --was to
have the privilege of inserting his penis between
Loeb's legs at special rates; at one time it was to
be three times in
two
months, if they continued their criminalistic
activities together. . .
then
they had some of their quarrels, and then it was
once for each
criminalistic
deed.Clarence
Darrow: I do not
suppose this should be
taken in the presence of newspapermen, your Honor.

Judge
Caverly: Gentlemen, will you go and sit
down, you newspapermen!
Take your
seats. This should not be published.

Robert
Crowe: What
other
act's, if any, did they tell you about?

You say that there are
other acts that they did rarely or seldom?

William
Healy: Oh, they
were
just experimenting once or twice with each other.

Clarence
Darrow:Tell what it
was.

William
Healy: They
experimented with mouth perversions. . . . Leopold
has had for many
years a
great deal of phantasy life surrounding sex
activity. . .He has
phantasies of being with a man, and
usually with Loeb himself . . . He says he gets a
thrill out of
anticipating
it. . . . Loeb would pretend to be drunk, then this
fellow would
undress him
and he would almost rape him and would be furiously
passionate. . . .
With
women he does not get that same thrill and passion.

Robert
Crowe: That is
what he
tells you?William
Healy: Surely.
. . .
That is what he tells me. Loeb tells me himself. . .
how he feigns sometimes to be drunk, in order that
he should have his
aid in
carrying out his criminalistic ideas. That is what
Leopold gets out of
it, and
that is what Loeb gets out of it. . . . When Leopold
had this first
experience
with his penis between Loeb's legs. . . he found it
gave him more
pleasure than
anything else he had ever done. . . . Even in jail
here, a look at
Loeb's body
or his touch upon his shoulder thrills him so, he
says, immeasurably....

Robert Crowe: When
Leopold
began to plan with Loeb this murder,
what was
acting then, his intellect or
his emotions?

William
Healy: His
intellect, but always accompanied by some emotional
life, as it always is.

Robert Crowe: Which was in
control, the intellect or the emotions, at the time
they planned to
steal the
typewriter, so that they could write letters that
could not be traced
back to
them?

William
Healy: I think the
intellect was the predominating thing there
probably.

Robert Crowe: And when they
rented the room in the Morrison Hotel, intellect was
still walking in
front?

William
Healy: Yes.

Robert Crowe: And so on
through all the details of this murder?

William
Healy: Yes, sir.

Bernard Glueck,
psychiatrist and defense expert

Bernard Gluek:
....I then took up
with Loeb the Franks crime,and asked him to tell me
about it. He
recited
to
me in a most matter of fact way all the gruesome
details of the
planning and
execution of this crime, of the disfiguring and the
disposal of the
body, how he
and Leopold stopped with the body in the car to get
something to eat on
the
way. He spoke to me in a most matter of fact way
about his doings and
movements
immediately following this act. As his recital
proceeded, I was amazed
at the
absolute absence of any signs of normal feeling,
such as one would
expect under
the circumstances. He showed no remorse, no regret,
no compassion for
the
people involved in this situation, and as he kept on
talking. . . there
became
evident the absolute lack of normal human emotional
response that would
fit
these situations, and the whole thing became
incomprehensible to me
except on
the basis of a disordered personality. . . . In the
course of my
conversation
with him he told me how his little brother. . .
passed in review before
him as
a possible vic­tim of the kidnapping and
killing. Even in
connection with this
state­ment, he showed the same lack of adequate
emotional response
to the
situation.

Benjamin
Bachrach: In the
conversation with Richard Loeb, did he say anything
about who it was that struck the blow on the head of
Robert Franks with
the
chisel?

Bernard
Gluek: He told
me all
the details of the crime, including the fact that he
struck the blow.

Benjamin
Bachrach: If
you have
reached any conclusion with reference to his mental
condition, you may
now
state it.

Bernard
Gluek: My
impression is
very definite that this boy is suffering from a
disordered personality,
that
the nature of this disorder is primarily in a
profound pathological
discord
between his intellectual and emotional life.

Benjamin
Bachrach: Now
then,
doctor, are you ready to begin with your examination
of the defendant
Nathan F.
Leopold, Jr.?

Bernard
Gluek: Yes.

Benjamin
Bachrach: You
may proceed.
. . .

Bernard
Gluek: I
started out
with him by asking him to tell me about the Franks
murder. .. . He
argued with
me that for many years he has cultivated and adhered
to a purely
hedonistic
philosophy that all action is justified if it gives
pleasure; that it
was his
ambition and has been for many years to become a
perfect Nietzschean
and to
follow Nietzsche's philosophy all the way through. .
. . He told me of
his
attitude toward Loeb and of how completely he had
put himself in the
role of
slave in connection with him. He said, "I can
illustrate it to you by
saying
that I felt myself less than the dust beneath his
feet." . . . He told
me of
his abject devo­tion to Loeb, saying that he was
jealous of the
food and drink
that Loeb took, because he could not come as close
to him as did the
food and
drink. .. Nathan F. Leopold, in my estimation, is a
definitely
paranoid
personality, perhaps developing a definite paranoid
psychosis. I have
not seen
a definite psychosis of this sort in as young a
person as he is. His
aberration
is characterized primarily by this abnormal
pathologi­cal
transformation of his
personality and by the delusional way of thinking.

Benjamin
Bachrach:
Doctor, from your experience in dealing with persons
of
disordered mind, state whether or not it is common
and ordinary to find
in such
persons a high degree of' intelligence existing at
the same time as the
abnormality or diseased condition?

Bernard
Gluek: If I
should give
an answer to this question in a general way,I
should say that it is quite characteristic of
paranoid individuals to
have
along with their disordered mental state a highly
developed
intelligence.

Benjamin
Bachrach: Have
you
observed among other such persons under your care
the ability to plan
like
ordinary intelligent people without abnormality?

Bernard
Gluek: I have
observed
the most ingenious and great capacity to plan among
paranoid patients.
. . .
Patients suffering from mental disorder­ and 90
percent of my
patients in
private practice do suffer from mental
disorder-carryon their
activities while
they are under treatment for their mental disorder.

Benjamin
Bachrach: You may take the
witness.

Harold
Hulbert, defense
expert on endocrinological evidence

Walter Bachrach:As I understand
you, you say you took [Loeb's] blood pressure?

Harold
Hurbert: Yes.

Walter
Bachrach: Tell
us the
result of that test.

Harold
Hurbert: Systolic,
100;
diastolic, 65. Blood pressure, 35. Pulse rate, 88 to
92.Walter
Bachrach: Did
the result
of that test in any way indicate a deviation from
normal, as far as
blood
pressure is concerned?

Harold
Hurbert: It is
below
normal.

Walter
Bachrach: You
said you
took a basal metabolism test. State what that is and
its purpose.

Harold
Hurbert: The
basal
metabolism test is a chemical test to determine the
rate at which the
body
tissues oxidize the food which the body has and
gives us an indication
of the
vital forces of the body. The test is done in a
technical way by having
the
patient appear without any breakfast and lie quietly
for an hour in
loose
clothing, breathing into an apparatus which has been
clamped to the
mouth, the
nose having been shut tight, to measure the carbon
dioxide of the
breath....

This has
all
been carefully tabulated in thousands of cases . . .
We are able to
contrast
the results obtained in any one patient with what
would be normal for
that
patient considering his age, weight, etc. The
metabolism test, in the
case of
Richard Loeb on June 14th, taken under ideal
circumstances, was minus
seventeen
percent, which is abnormally low.

Walter
Bachrach: What
does such an abnormally low basal metabolism result
signify?

Harold
Hurbert: A
disorder of
the endocrine glands and the sympathic nervous
system. It is one phase
of medical evidence to indicate that there is such a
disease of the endocrines and sympathetic nervous
system.

... [Loeb's] urine showed
"clear
transparency and
amber
color--no albumin, no sugar, no indican . . . but
there was mucus present, and a few epithelial cells.Robert
Crowe: That throws
considerable light on this murder, does it not?

Walter
Bachrach:Iobject to counsel interrupting!Did
you make an
X-ray examination of Richard Loeb?

Harold
Hurbert: We
did...

[The
results for
Loeb were normal.]Walter
Bachrach: [Did
the X-rays for Leopold reveal any abnormalities?]

Harold
Hurbert: The
X-ray of the
skull revealed the most pathology. The tables of the
skull, the bony tables of the skull, are of normal
thickness, but the
union
between the various bones of the skull has become
firm and ossified at
the age
of 19.

Walter
Bachrach: What
in normal
life is the time at which ossification takes
place?

Harold
Hurbert: It
varies, but
usually at full maturity or when a man is in his
prime.

Walter
Bachrach: In
terms of years
when does that usually take place?

Harold
Hurbert: I
would say from
thirty to thirty-five.

...The pineal
gland in this x-ray throws a definite shadow,
typical of a calcified pineal gland.

Walter
Bachrach:What is the
pineal gland? What is the function of the pineal
gland so far as it is known to science?

Harold
Hurbert: [Hurbert
said the gland controlled sexual desire by
inhibiting the libido, and
it stimulated mental development. ]

Walter
Bachrach: What
relation is there between the abnormal functioning
of his endocrine glands and his mental condition?

Harold
Hurbert: The
effect of
the endocrine glands on the mental condition is
definitely established
in the
minds of medical men in certain points and is still
a matter of dispute
in
others. . . . I would say that his endocrine
disorder is responsible
for the
following mental findings. His precocious mental
development, his rapid
advance
through school, his ease of learning, are of
endocrine origins. . . .
The early
development and strength of his sex urge is
obviously of endocrine
origin. His
shal­low mood and his good bearing are of
endocrine origin and
particu­larly
his mental activity and early mental development are
of endocrine
origin.Walter
Bachrach:What would be
the effect of that upon him, where there was not a
corresponding
maturity of
his emotional life and judgment?

Harold
Hurbert: The
effect of
the intellectual drive of endocrine origin. . . and
[his] emotional
shallowness
is that he now has mentally a decided degree of
discrepancy, a diseased
discrepancy, between his judgment and emotions on
the one hand and his
intellect on the other hand.

Walter
Bachrach: What,
if any,
effect, did the diseased condition of Leopold on
May 21st, 1924, have in connection Franks kidnapping
and homicide?

Harold
Hurbert: A
very great deal. .
. . His mental condition or disease at that time
would not primarily
have
caused him alone to have carried out any such
kidnapping or homicide.
It caused
him to ignore the ordinary restraint which
individuals impose upon
themselves
because of their consciousness of their duties they
owe to society; it
caused
him to react in the non-emotional way he did at that
time and
subsequently;
caused him to justify his own actions to himself, so
that he is
uncritical of
them; and his mental condition at that time is one
of the
predominat­ing
factors in this homicide and kidnapping.

Walter
Bachrach: Would
Leopold on
May 21st, 1924, have been able to commit the Franks
kidnapping and
homicide but
for the presence of such mental disease?

Harold
Hurbert: He could not
have done it.

Walter
Bachrach: State
whether
the diseased mental condition of Richard Loeb on

May
21st,
1924, entered into the Franks
homicide and kidnapping?

Harold
Hurbert: It
did.

Walter
Bachrach:Will you tell us
how?

Harold
Hurbert: The
mental
condition of Richard Loeb on that date was a direct
factor. . . . He
was
impelled by motives which had been nourished in his
subconscious mind,
his
judgment was childish and uncritical and did not
restrain him. . . .
His
emotions are definitely immature and childish, and
he had only an
academic
realization of what he owed to society, his feeling
on the matter being
too
slight to bind him or modify his conduct and his
mentally diseased
condition at
that time based on his experiences and based on his
constitution was a
definite
factor in this kidnapping and homicide.

Walter
Bachrach: Could
Richard
Loeb but for the existence of the mental disease
existing in him on the
21st of
May, 1924, and which you have described in your
testimony, had
committed the
Franks kidnapping and homicide?

Harold
Hurbert: He
could not.

Cross-examination
by
Robert Crowe

Robert
Crowe: Who made the basal
metabolism test?

Harold
Hurbert: Dr.
Moore, Dr.
Bowman and myself. On Leopold we repeated the test
three times, and took the average of the three, and
on Loeb we took the
test
twice, and took the average of the two. Those tests
were continued one
right
after the other.

Robert Crowe: Don't you
know you have no machine in Chicago that can
accurately make this test?

Harold
Hurbert: I was
quite
satisfied with the machine we used.

Robert Crowe: What kind was
it?

Harold
Hurbert: A
Jones.

Robert Crowe: Is it not a fact that
there is no machine
that can accurately take this
test,
but they take a great many and average them in order
to arrive at some
conclusion?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don’t know whether
there is a perfect machine or not. Now, this machine
was good enough.

Robert Crowe: If it was not
perfect, then the result would not be perfect?

Harold
Hurbert: It
might or it might
not. Robert Crowe: If it is not a good
reliable test, it is not of any use, is it?

Harold
Hurbert: I
would not use an
unreliable test.

Robert Crowe: Describe the X-ray
apparatus and the techniques by which these x-ray
pictures were
taken.Harold
Hurbert: The
apparatus we used
was a portable machine furnished by the Victor X-ray
people, one of the
largest
X-ray manufacturers in America, brought to the jail
by Dr. Blaine, of
the
National Pathological Laboratory, former radiologist
at Cook County
Hospital
for a number of years, and by Dr. Darnell, research
pathologist of the
Victor
Company… Triplicate films were taken in all cases.
The parts of the
body pictures
were studied by me through the fluoroscope for the
purpose of
identification,
and the films were identified with my Veterans of
Foreign Wars
insignia, which
I wear, so that there would be no doubt as to their
identity. The
pictures were
carried to the
laboratory by the
technicians in the same taxi with me; they were
never out of my sight.
I went
into the dark room at the time they were developed,
and stayed there
talking
with Dr.Blaine while they were being developed.

Robert Crowe: Do you know the name of
the machine you used?

Harold
Hurbert: A
Victor
portable.

Robert Crowe: What kind of a
current, direct or alternating?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't know.

Robert Crowe: What kind of a
tube?

Harold
Hurbert: All I
know is,
it was a new tube suitable for the portable machine,
a Victor tube.

Robert Crowe:What
transformer
was used?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't know.

Robert Crowe: Where was the
transformer located on the machine?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't know.

Robert Crowe: Is it possible
to see a calcified pineal gland through a
fluoroscope?

Harold
Hurbert: It
may be.

Robert
Crowe: Did you
see
it?

Harold
Hurbert: I did
not.

Robert
Crowe: Did you
ever see
one through a fluoroscope?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't think
so.

Robert Crowe: Can you see the
sella turcica through the fluoroscope?

Harold
Hurbert: Yes,
sir.

Robert
Crowe: Did you?

Harold
Hurbert: I did.

Robert
Crowe: Did you use
cassettes in taking these films?

Harold
Hurbert: I beg
pardon?

Robert Crowe: Did you use
cassettes in taking these films?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't know
what you mean.

Robert Crowe: If you don't
know what I mean, then you would not know who
furnished them, would
you?

Harold
Hurbert: It I
don't know
what you mean, I don't know what you are talking
about.

Robert Crowe: What screens
were used, do you know?

Harold
Hurbert: I
don't know, sir.

Robert Crowe: Was the Bucky
diaphragm used? Harold Hurbert: I am not a radiologist.

PROSECUTION WITNESSES

William
Krohn, expert witness for the
prosecution:On Richard Loeb:
In my opinion, as a result of that examination,

[Richard
Loeb] was not
suffering from any mental
disease, either functional or structural, on May 21st,
1924, or on the
date I
examined him....[T]he
stream of thought flowed
without any interruption or
any break from within. There was not a single remark
made that was
beside the
point. The answer to every question was responsive.
There was no
irresponsive
answer to any ques­tion. There was abundant
evidence that the man.
. . was
perfectly ori­ented as to time, as to place, and
as to his social
relations.....Not only that, there was excellence of
attention. . . .
There was not a
single evidence of any defect, any disorder, any lack
of development,
or any
disease, and by disease I mean functional as well as
structural.

On Nathan Leopold:

There
was
no evidence of any organic disease of the brain, as
would have been
revealed
by the Argyll-Robertson pupil. . . . There was no
evidence of any toxic
mental
condition resulting from any toxicity of the body,
because the pulse
and the
tremors that would have been incidental thereto were
absent at this
examination.....[H]e
showed remarkably close attention, detailed
attention; he showed that he was perfectly oriented
socially as well as
with
reference to time and space...[There
were] none of the
modifications of movement that come with certain
mental disorders.

Archibald Church
(chair of the
department of nervous and mental diseases at
Northwestern University),
expert witness for the prosecution:

Joseph
Sbarbaro:
Have
you
an opinion, doctor, from your obser­vation and
examination, as to whether the defendant, Richard
Loeb, was suffering
from any
mental disease on that day, at that time? Church: The
young man, was entirely oriented. He knew who he
was and where he was, and the time of day and
everything about it. His
memory
was extraordinarily good; his logical powers
manifested during the
interview
were normal, and I saw no evidence ofany
mental disease.Sbarbaro: Now,
doctor, have you an opinion from your observation and
examination of
Nathan
Leopold, Jr., as to whether he was suffering any
mental disease at that
same
time?

Church:
I have.

Sbarbaro:
What is that opinion?

Church There
was no evidence of any
mental
disease.

Sbarbaro: Will
you
state your reasons again,
please?

Church: Because
he was perfectly
oriented, of
good memory, of extreme reasoning capacity, and
apparently of good
judgment
within the range of the subject matter....

Phantasies,
are day dreams.
Everybody has them. Everybody knows they
are dreams. They have an interest in re­lation to
character and
conduct, but
they do not compel conduct nor excuse
it.

Cross-examination by
Clarence Darrow:

Darrow:Now, there were,
some fifteen
people in

the room while you
were talking to these
boys?

Church:I
think, hardly that many, but there

were
many, I know that.

Darrow:Too
many, for a thorough consultation?

Church:Too
many, for an ideal consulta­tion.

Darrow:You
never had anybody bring you
a patient to treat where you

called
in any such
number of people as
that, did you?

Church:Occasionally
it is very
difficult to keep all the members of the

family
out.

Darrow:I asked
you a specific
question.

Church: No,
I
never treated a patient in private practice--examined
a patient before
as many people.

Darrow:You have
laid down the rules
yourself as to how a private exami­nation should
be conducted, have
you not?

Church:Well, I control
the situation
under
those conditions.

Darrow:Did
you ask any questions?

Church: Yes.

Darrow:Who
did most of the
questioning?

Church: Really,
there were very few questions asked.

Dr.
Patrick asked a few and
Dr. Krohn asked a few and Mr. Crowe asked a
few, but most of it was continuous narrative on the
part of Mr. Loeb
and some
questions asked him by Leopold and some back and forth
conversation
between

them…'

Darrow: Did
you ask any questions to find out evidence of mental
dis­ease?

Church:No.

Darrow: Did
anybody else that you
know
of?

Church:Well, all of the
questions and
conversations were for the purpose,

as
far as I was
concerned, of determining
their mental status....

Darrow: [Showing
Church
a copy of a book he had co-authored called Nervous
and
Mental Diseases] This is your latest on this
subject and you have
said here: "The examination of a patient with mental
disorder is a much more complex process than that of a
case of physical
disease. . . . For it is necessary in the former not
only to ascertain
the
present physical condition, as with ordinary patients,
but also to
inves­tigate
the mental state, which involves the employment of
unusual and new
methods and
brings us into contact with a novel series of psychic
phenomena, and
moreover
to attain our end we need to study the whole past life
of the patient,
his
diseases, accidents, schooling, occupa­tion,
environment,
temperament,
character; nor can we stop here; for it is of the
greatest importance
to inform
ourselves as to conditions among his antecedents to
determine the type
of
family from which he sprung, and the presence or
absence of an
hereditary
taint. There is therefore much to learn even before
seeing the patient
in
person." And you did
not learn that before seeing them,
surely?.

Church: I did
not have the opportunity....Darrow: You
would not
question what I have
been reading as being correct, would you, that is, as
being proper in
the
examination of a pa­tient,
would
you?

Prosecutor
Robert Crowe: Just
a
moment. I object
to cross examining upon a textbook, a portion of
which-and the
portion that he is being cross-examined on-he did not
write, and
disclaims any
responsibility for. . . . You can only cross-examine
him on something
that he
has based his opinion on in this case.

Hugh Patrick(professor in the
department of nervous and
mental diseases at Northwestern University), expert
witness for the
prosecution:
Cross-examination by Benjamin Bachrach:

Bachrach: How many
people [had been
in the

room
when Leopold
and Loeb were interviewed]?

Patrick: I
suppose there
were about ten peo­ple there or something like that.
There may have been more.

Bachrach:Don't
you think, there were about fifteen?

Patrick: No, I
shouldn't think there were
fifteen, but it was possible.

Bachrach:Let us
count them. There
were the state's attorney and three
assistants. That is four.

Patrick: Four,
and the two prisoners
make
six.

Bachrach:
Six. [Weren't there
also three psychiatrists and one
physician present, as

well
as several
police officers?]

Patrick: And
four doctors are ten. Well it

might
go to
fifteen. . . .

Bachrach: And
two stenographers?Patrick: Yes,
two stenographers. I
guess it
would reach-

Bachrach: About
seventeen?

Patrick: Well,
I don't think so, but I
don't
know.

Bachrach:Did
you ever in your life make an examination of
any
person, as to his mental state, under
circumstances of that kind before?